Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“What do you think?”

“No evidence for it. No other parties seen in the area. On the other hand, no suicide note either. The police instigation, from the press reports, looks serious, no editorial suggestion it was anything more than a regular whatchamacallit, a. . I mean, that he killed himself. I need to talk to your pal Black Jack, though.”

“Uh-huh, and what about your big questions? I mean, does she even know you know she’s Bollano’s wife?” Harry was watching Marlene very carefully, his stomach fluttering, his hands damp.

“No, we didn’t get to that yet. I was trying to get her to list all the people involved in the cast then, who were still around and who might know something, and I mentioned her mother and she got upset, no, my mother doesn’t know anything I don’t, and we fenced around about that for a while, and then my paginator rang and I went down to call Butch, and while I was on the phone the bastards broke in. They must have jimmied the front door, and they used a. . you know, a thing, a wrecking bar to break through the glass, and she, Vonda, shot at them but missed, and they started shooting at her and then. . and then I. .”

She looked up at him, her brows knotted, her thick eyebrows nearly touching. “I can’t remember. First they broke the door down with the iron, and then I threw it at my mother.”

Harry’s reflexes were not what they had been, not after the years of boozing, but he started moving when he saw her good eye roll up in her head, and so he was able to catch her before she fell off her chair.

Karp had himself driven home in a police car, a privilege he rarely exercised, except in direct line of duty, which, he now observed sourly to himself, home had very nearly become, with his daughter a possible witness to murder and his wife behind bars.

The little boys, at least, remained uninvolved in any crime more serious than Deliberate Spill of Apple Juice, two counts (Zik), and Assault With Plastic Brontosaurus (Zak). Karp held court on his lap in the living room, and let both of them off with a warning. Where’s Mommy? they wanted to know. Mommy’s still at work, he lied. He asked Posie to go ahead and feed the monsters, and asked, “How’s Lucy?”

Posie rolled her eyes and pointed her chin in the direction of the girl’s bedroom.

“She got home, went in there, locked the door, and hasn’t been out once. She’s grounded, huh?”

“In a way,” said Karp. He went to the bedroom and got out of his suit and into chinos and a faded sleeveless sweatshirt and, sighing, went down the hall to knock at the prison door.

“Lucy, it’s me, open up.”

Steps, the click of the lock, more steps. He went in. A cassette recorder was playing some sort of odd music, a throbbing, low electronic droning, with a voice over it, husky, insistent, seductive, not singing but speaking in precise short sentences. Lucy had returned to her bed and picked up a small blue book. Karp sat on Lucy’s wooden swivel chair and took in his surroundings, as always, with some wonder at the mysteries of how kids turned out. Unlike most children her age, Lucy was neat, almost compulsively so. Her room resembled the habitation of a scholarly nun: a simple narrow bed, with a duvet in the form of the flag of Italy, above it a colorful, rough, gory Haitian crucifix, low bookcases along one wall, the books lined up and arranged by subject and author, on the other wall a desk, excruciatingly neat, sporting a little row of dictionaries between plaster gargoyle bookends, above which a large cork board displayed calligraphy samples, a chart of the 209 common radicals used in Chinese characters, a print of a portrait of an elderly gentleman in ecclesiastic garb (Cardinal Mezzofanti, 1774–1849, once the Vatican librarian and, Karp had been informed, a linguist quite in Lucy’s class), a school picture of her eighth-grade class, matted in cardboard, a poster of Bob Marley singing, a glossy photograph of a woman with short blond hair wearing sunglasses and a man’s suit and tie all in white, and a colored map of the world, showing in color-coded boxes the languages spoken thereupon, with a scatter of red map pins indicating those Lucy Karp had already mastered.

“Who’s the singer?” Karp asked.

“Laurie Anderson,” said Lucy shortly, not looking up.

“She’s not exactly singing, is she? Not the kind of thing you can dance to.”

“I like it. I like the words.” Silence afterward.

“Put the book down, Lucy,” said Karp after a minute of waiting. “We need to talk.”

She huffed and snapped it down on the bed, and sat up against the wall, looking at him with that angry, bored expression every parent of an adolescent dreads to see. She had scrubbed her face and pulled her hair back severely and had changed into baggy black shorts and a white T-shirt printed with the photograph of a professorial-looking man with bushy hair, underneath which was the text colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

“Your mom’s in jail again,” he said, thinking once more that this was not a sentence he had ever imagined speaking in former years.

“What did she do?”

“Allegedly shot a couple of gangsters trying to bust into the shelter and grab some woman.”

“She kill them?”

“No, as a matter of fact, she did not. As I understand it, she waded into a hail of bullets, disabled the two bad guys with four shots, and got punched out in the scuffle when the cops got there. A pretty heroic deed, it seems. Uncle Harry’s down with her to help get her through and bail her out. She should be home later tonight.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Thank you for your concern,” said Karp, and was immediately ashamed of the sarcasm. Sarcasm had been a major tool in his own upbringing, and he had resolved never to use it with his own children. It was worry, and tension, and suppressed anger, he supposed. He went and sat down next to her on the bed and placed an arm over her thin shoulders. She was stiff as a tailor’s dummy. The Laurie Anderson tape came to an end. Off in the loft they could hear the sound of the TV and the ringing of the phone.

“Lucy, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“You’re not fine. You were kidnapped and beat up today. It’s okay to feel a little stunned. Maybe a couple of days at home will do you some good. It shouldn’t take longer than that to pick up those guys.” No response. He said, “Have you thought of anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“No,” said Lucy, and then the door to her room burst open and there was Posie, looking distraught. “Butch! Harry Bello’s on the phone, he says it’s an emergency.”

So it had been. Harry was calling from Beth Israel Hospital. Something was wrong with Marlene’s brain, which Karp already knew, but this was different, she was in surgery. This announced, shrieks and wails from Posie, sympathetic crying from the two boys, from Lucy, to Karp’s surprise and bemused relief, a cool efficiency. The girl got Posie on an even keel again, comforted the babes, organized cocoa and cookies, dialed the TV to an anodyne program involving space creatures. Karp grabbed his wallet and a jacket, made a call, and headed for the door. Lucy had her sneakers on and joined him.

“I’m coming,” she announced.

“You’re sure you’re up for this, Luce?”

“She’s my mother.” Looking down at her, Karp saw this fact reflected in the set of her pale little face and the look in her yellow-brown eyes. He grasped her hand, and they walked out together.

They went uptown in an unmarked, siren and lights. Harry met them at the neuro ward. Still in, no news.

“How long has he been here?” asked Karp.

Harry looked over at the corner of the waiting room, where Tran sat, motionless in a green plastic chair.